To be useful, a computer peripheral traditionally had to be connected directly to a computer. Such connections were and are often accomplished through a parallel, serial, USB (Universal Serial Bus), SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), or IEEE 1394 port. IEEE is short for “Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.” More recently, manufacturers are building peripherals such as printers, scanners and facsimile devices that include hardware and programming enabling those devices to be connected directly to a computer network.
A networked peripheral provides a number of benefits. For example, it is more easily accessed by network users. Where a peripheral is connected to the parallel or USB port of a host computer, that peripheral can only be accessed by other computers on a network if the host computer is operational. A networked peripheral does not rely on the availability of a host computer. Instead, it can be accessed directly over the network.
Networked peripherals often include programming such as a web server that enable a user to directly access web pages or other content for configuring and accessing features offered by the peripheral. Web servers running on a peripheral are often times referred to as embedded web servers. An embedded web server for a particular peripheral is accesses by browsing to a network address assigned to that peripheral. The network address is often an IP (Internet Protocol) address. An IP address consists of four groups of numbers separated by a decimal point or period—192.168.1.1—for example. IP addresses are difficult to remember. This is compounded by the fact that the IP address for a particular peripheral can change from time to time. This creates an unfortunate barrier making it difficult for users to fully utilize a networked peripheral.